Imagining and building the nation through citizenship education: an interculturalist perspective on the case of Denmark

ABSTRACT

Citizenship education in Denmark is considered as having a long history, not least as an important part of the folk high school tradition. More recently, it has become an important ingredient in the process for immigrants to obtain Danish citizenship. The focus of this paper is to analyse how the above types of citizenship education build on a particular imagining of the nation by engaging with the tradition and content of citizenship education as linked with the folk high schools and the preparation for the citizenship test. This is analysed within a critical interculturalist perspective and with Denmark as case.

Uddannelse til medborgerskab har en lang historie i Danmark. Det gælder ikke mindst som et væsentlig led i den danske højskoletradition. I nyere tid er medborgerskabsuddannelse blevet en vigtig del af den proces, immigranter skal gennemgå for at opnå dansk statsborgerskab. Det er politisk besluttet, at man skal bestå en indfødsretsprøve for at opnå statsborgerskab. Som forudsætning for denne skal man endvidere have fulgt dansk3 på en sprogskole og bestået dansk3 prøven. Denne artikel fokuserer på at analysere, hvilke forestillinger om nation og medborgerskab de ovennævnte uddannelser bygger på. Dette analyseres inden for en kritisk interkulturel ramme og med Danmark som case.

KEYWORDS:

• Citizenship education
• nation-building
• integration
• citizenship
• national identity
• interculturalism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Annette Rasmussen

Annette Rasmussen is an associate professor at the Department of Culture and Learning, Aalborg University. Her main discipline is sociology of education, and she has a particular interest and expertise in ethnographic approaches to education policies and practices, including issues of socialisation, evaluation, differentiation, integration, democracy, structural change, and inequality in education. She is doing research with special regard to the Nordic welfare states’ vision of education for all and how this is restructured within the frameworks of global neoliberalism.